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BIG INTERVIEW RICHARD JAMES BURGESS

MY A21M IS TRUE In his new role as CEO of A21M, Richard James Burgess is responsible for protecting the interests of America's indie labels. After a turbulent few months for the sector, he tells Music Week why the whole industry needs to present a united front.. .

INDIES • BY EMMANUEL LEGRAND

R ichard James Burgess is back in

Washington for a few hours. The

recently-appointed CEO of New

York-based US independent labels'

organisation A21M is here as the guest of the

Music & Entertainment Industry Educators

Association (MEIEA). But Burgess is more

than familiar with D.C.: he spent 15 years in

the US capital, working for the Smithsonian

Institution as the head of its non-profit

heritage label Folkways Recordings.

Burgess now spends most of his time

in New York, steering an organisation that

has been crucial to the visibility of the indie

community in the past decade. He is the

third person to helm A21M in the past 12

months. following the departure of Rich

Bengloff. who held the job for a decade,

and Molly Neuman, who took over from

Bengloff as interim president and is now w 1th

Kickstarter. Burgess was appointed CEO of

A21M in January. but knows the organisation

well as he served as chairman of its board for

six months before taking the job

Born in 1g4g in London. Burgess has been

in the music business all his professional

life. His parents moved to Christchurch in

New Zealand in 1g5g and he still has a hint

of an accent from his stay down under.

He was an alumni of the Berklee College

Of Music in Boston and later worked on a

PhD in musico logy. He started h is career

as a musician - a drummer first with

such bands as the Buggies: but also as a

synthesiser p ioneer (Roland and Fairlight)

on Landscape's landmark album From The

Tea-Rooms Of Mars .. . To The Hell-Holes

Of Uranus: a songwriter, performer and

producer (Spandau Ballet's To Cut A Long

Story Short, Kim Wilde and Adam Ant)

Burgess talks fast. layering thoughts one

after the other. sometimes going off on

tangents, but always focused on trying

to c onvince his audience. At the MEIEA

meeting, Burgess' message to the teaching

community is quite simple. He wants the

industry to work in a more cohesive and

united manner. in orde r to fix its proble m s:

and he is c onvinced that mdie labels are

APRIL 18 10 MUSIC WEEK

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the lifeblood of musical d ivers ity. especia lly

in the US. where companies are scattered

across the territory, and cover all music

genres. One of h is pet talking points is the

'value gap'

·value has been created by music but

has been channelled away from artists: he

te lls these educators in the room and his

message seems to resona te with t hem . Many

of the questions after h is speech were about

how music could reclaim it s p rime position

in the cultural and creat ive economy. These

are themes tha t are close to Burgess· heart.

A21M has a few busy months ahead. The

organ isation is putting together the now

well-followed lndie Week (June 13-16 in

New York) and is also preparing t he next

edition o f the Libera Awards (June 16). the

ceremony celebrating the achievements

o f the ind ie community. After h is one-hour

speech. Music Week sat down with Burgess

to discuss the future of the ind ie sector ..

You have been in the job for a few months now.

How has it been so far?

Great and intense. Not so m uc h of a learning

curve in the sense t hat I was on the board

[of A2 1MI and I was chairman for six months

before I started. So in the sense of. Do I

know what the issues are?. it's not that much

o f a learning curve. In a sense of rebui lding,

it feels like f ixing the bike while we are r iding

the Tour De France, honestly. I've had to

re-staff because we were down t o three

people and now we are about to get back up

to six people. I am bringing in a marketing

person because we could do better in

te rms of awareness of disseminating the

information about what we do.

Did the board give you a specific brief as to where

they want the organisation to go?

Well, I was part of the board, so I was part of

that evolution of that brief and the brief really

is growth. but not growth for growth's sake.

It is growth because we want to mark out

that indie sector; we want to make sure the

indie sector is secure and not disadvantaged.

We wou ld like it to be done in a way that

everybody is on board w ith it. We don't

want to be f ighting with other segments of

the industry but at the same t ime we want

what is r ightfully ours. I'm determined to

consolidate the indie posi tion in the industry.

Frankly. with t he RIAA. and other people,

we have some very positive c onversations. I

think that other entities in the industry realise

that we each bring something d ifferent to

the tab le and the indies bring a li ttle bit of

credibility. and a little b it of respect.

What are the hot potatoes that you have had to

deal immediately with?

In terms o f real hot potatoes. the transitio n

MUSIC WEEK

happened right during the [webcastingJ

hearing submission [to decide US internet

radio rat es for sound recordings!. so we

were basically battling for the lives of indies

in terms of whether we would wind up w 1th

two separate rates. one for the majors and

one for the indies. Tha t was pretty stressful

and that was before I even became CEO '

'We don't want to be fighting with other segments of the industry, but we want what is rightfully ours" RICHARD JAMES BURGESS, A21M

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) ultimately

rejected the majors' bid to get double the indies'

rate. You now sit on the board of labels collection

society Sound Exchange. Do you think that those

CRB rates are going to affect SoundExchange's

bottom line?

Sound Exchange was not happy with the

rates setting. We would always want to see

them a bit higher. but on the other hand

some people pointed out that there was

a 20% inc rease so it wasn't the end of the

world. But do I think that the CRB rates are

going to affect SoundExchange7 I would be

more worried about massive direct deals

with the services than I would be about the

CRB rate.

Some people seem to have a perception that indie

rights agency Merlin screwed up for the whole

industry by settling with Pandora for lower than

the market rates, even though that deal had many

different aspects to it. Is that an unfair perception?

I'm not here to d e fend Merlin and A2 1M is

not Merlin . First of all. the d ea l that M erlin

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struck was bette r for the indie labels that

signed onto t hat deal than not doing the

deal [wou ld have been!. The idea that it

was lower than the rate is not really factual.

because t h is speaks to the problem with

the way that the Copyright Royalty Board

judges looked at that deal. They completely

ignored the extra benefits of the deal and the

tru th is, labels that sig ned onto that would

make more money under the Merlin deal

than they would if they JUSt accepted the

statutory rate. If the judges had looked at

the revenue share portions of the deal and

various other parameters that surrounded

it. they would have not made the decision

they made and they wouldn't have pointed

the f mger at Merlin. I t hink it was an unfair

charac terisa tion of tha t deal, espec ially

bec ause they could have made the same

characterisations of a number of other direct

deals that were done by the majors and by

individual indie labels as well.

Indies are the lifeblood of SoundCloud and yet

SoundCloud seem more interested in doing a deal

w ith the majors. What does that say about the

status of Indies?

I don't know how that will work out for

SoundC ioud, and I hope it does. SoundC loud

is a very useful organ isation and we, as

a sector. are pretty forgiving . You get

organisations that come over from the dark

side. that are stealing copyright. that are

using unlic ensed music for years and the n

when they eventually dec ide to go straight.

we generally embrac e them. I th ink that's

the right way to approach it. personally. We

are not in d irect competition w ith the majors

in t he sense that I have utmost respect for

what the majors are doing, they should ge t

the i r share as muc h as we sho uld . My o n ly

APRIL 18

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BIG INTERVIEW RICHARD JAMES BURGESS

concern is that we get a fair share.

The class action suits against Spotify and other

streaming services over unlicensed mechanical

rights - is that something you follow?

It doesn't directly affect us as labels and

as A21M. but we are concerned about that.

There are a couple of things. One is that

many of our labels are also publishers. This

is where I talk about the zero-sum game.

For instance. if the publishers got a better

streaming rate from Pandora but it has

reduced the sound record ing streaming rate.

that wouldn't make any sense because it

would be a zero-sum game. Rights holders

need to do better. I support the idea that

mechanicals need to be paid. I support

the idea that pre-72 copyright s need to be

paid for. I support all music creators and

copyright owners in getting a rightful share

because. w ithout creators and copyright

owners. we don't have a music industry.

In your MEIEA speech, you said the industry

should be more united in order to be taken

seriously, especially by legislators. Yet it

seems like there is more of a divide rather

than some sort of united front ..

I see that. but at the same t ime there are

conversa tions that go on behind the scenes

that make me feel encouraged about this.

I'm not going to say that there isn't going

to be the temptation for people to take

advantage and to squeeze that extra f raction

of a per cent of market share. just for their

own benefit. If everybody I'm talking to on

all sides of the fence is sensible enough- it's

not about ideology, it's about doing better

for us all and making more money and

being more successfu l - we can grow the

pie joint ly. If we are able to convince tech

companies t hat we can fil l their pipelines

up with even more stuff and find even more

ways that music can be monetised. 1t could

work out.

In your speech you said that the industry

is probably delusional in thinking that the

government could fix the situation.

I was JUxtaposing that with the idea that

we speak w ith several voices. therein lies

the problem. The government will not fix

anything for us as long as the publishers are

going in and saying one th ing, the labels

are saying another and the artists are saying

another. The question is. can we fix those

problems within the industry so we don't

have disparate factions in our own industry

speaking out against other factions? Can we

de-factionalise the industry effectively and

then. as an industry. speak to government

and say. This is what we need to f ix?

Going back to your Smithsonian days. what did you

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learn about business while you were there?

From a business perspect ive. not very much

because l was the one who brought t he

business perspective to Folkways. There

really wasn't anybody there who had music

business experience to speak of besides me.

So. if anything. what I did was reorganise

Folkways to be more like a record label.

because it 1S a record label and it functions

just like a stand-alone independent label

at the Smithsonian. What I really learned at

Smithsonian though. which set me u p well

for this organisation. is about dealing with

larger organisations and bureaucracies and

reporting to people because I had rea lly

always worked for myself. I very much am

a 'say yes' person. so learning how to get

people to say yes when they actually want to

say no is a real big lesson and a useful one.

How about your perspective on the music itself.

on the repertoire. and the heritage role you were

playing there?

That was what took me there really . It's a

unique collection and I had been influenced

by that collection since I was a kid . It was

really the quality of the collection and

what Moses lAsch. who founded Folkways

Records in lg48] did too. and that I didn't

fu lly understand until I got there.

Which brings us back to the ethos of indie labels.

They're mostly built by strong people w ith a vision.

12

When you have those people on your board. it

can't be be very easy to navigate ...

That's an interesting thing because that was

the best board I was ever on and I've been

on quite a lot of boards in my time' It can

get quite heat ed at t imes in terms of people

having di f ferent opinions. but it's mcred ibly

collegiate. The thing about entrepreneurs is

they are very pragmatic - they just wan t to

get it done. They don't want to faff around.

they don't want to ta lk about it for the theory

so much as they just wan t to get it done. My

gut feeling is that everybody who runs an

independent label to a successful level has

certain common characteristics: they are

pretty obstinate. they are pretty opinionated.

and they are really good at what they do.

and they really know music. they love music.

they love t heir independence. Those are

good people to be around .

How do you see lndie Week evolving? Is that going

to become the US forum for all matters related to

independent labels?

I hope so. What struck me about lndie Week

is that it's so high level. The fact that it is

so cutting edge is really valuable. We also

try to have a level for younger labels or less

experienced music industry people. who

can come in and learn the basics of how

things work. We don't want it to turn into a

consumer level conference because there

are enough of those and they are very good.

but that is not what we do.

How are the bridges between A21M and AIM?

They're pretty strong. The bridge now

would be WIN -the Worldwide Independent

Network. We talk on a frequent basis and we

are very aware of what they are doing and

I think they are very aware of what we are

doing. We don't do everything the same. but

obviously AIM was the first of this particular

set of trade associations. so there is a really

good relationship there.

What are you going to be focusing on in the

next few months?

Gettmg lndie Week established . With the

Liberas. we are star ting to move it from a

stra ight presentation of awards to industry

people. [to featuring] more performances.

On the policy side. we have to respond to

issues that are occurring . I'm really p leased

to say the entire community. inc luding the

RIAA. has been really together on these last

three o r four f ilings and that's pretty exciting

because I wasn't seeing that before. Outside

of that. my number one priority is servi c ing

our labels better because. even on the best

day ever. I never feel like we are quite there

yet. So those can be quite small problems

sometimes. and sometimes they can be

gigantic ones like legislative ones.

MUSIC WEEK